“[We need] to take farmers exactly where they are at the moment, and help them be more productive using their knowledge, and technology that would be appropriate to add to it, and then gradually move them into a higher rate of production,rather than talking about them buying Monsanto products, or other kinds of products that they can’t afford and have to buy every year, as in the case of hybrid seed.”

Criticism has also come from unexpected corners: Howard Buffett, the eldest son of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, suggested on 60 Minutes in 2011 that the Gates Foundation’s bullish optimism about hybrid seeds is blind to the circumstances of developing nations: “We need to quit thinking about trying to do it like we do it in America.”

Corporate philanthropy today is about private, tax-exempt donors such as the Gates Foundation giving their charity to corporations.

The Gates Foundation is not the only philanthropic foundation offering donations to for-profits such as Mastercard. Other institutions such as the Ford Foundation have also given direct donations to for-profit firms, especially media companies, while the Wellcome Trust, Britain’s largest philanthropic organization, often makes grants to pharmaceutical companies.

These are not endowment investments.…They are donations that help to reduce corporate overhead, allowing some of the world’s wealthiest companies to offset the cost of expanding in new markets.Companies are not obligated to repay the grants, regardless of how profitable the gifts end up being.